


A-Z AUs.

by lovelyorbent



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Academia, Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Escorts, Alternate Universe - Game of Thrones Fusion, Alternate Universe - Hollywood, Alternate Universe - Indiana Jones, Alternate Universe - Journalism, Alternate Universe - Kindergarten & Pre-school, Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Not Human, Alternate Universe - Orchestra, Alternate Universe - Photographer, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Quidditch, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Western, Alternate Universe - X-Men Fusion, Alternate Universe - Yoga, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-18 15:51:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 16,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3575072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelyorbent/pseuds/lovelyorbent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which i have typed in 'alternate universe - [a...z]' into the archive of our own 'additional tags' box and picked one off the list for every letter and am writing drabbles for them all.</p><p>i'm keeping myself sharp/i wanted to write things that i could knock out quick and dirty and without thinking about making them make sense.</p><p>tags to be added as i complete this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Academia

**Author's Note:**

> alternate universe - academia. feat. professors raleigh, mako, and chuck and the vague mention of annoying student yancy.
> 
> i had so many good choices for this one. actors. artists. assassins. ancient rome. arranged marriage. but academia has my heart because it's my field, so i picked it.
> 
> ...i'm not sure i should actually tag all these aus because i'll end up with an assload of tags, but i guess i'll see as i continue.

"Becket!" comes the shout from the doorway, and then the noise of something being dropped.  Raleigh looks up from his computer and waits for Chuck to actually come into view before he responds.  "What is your idiot brother doing in my class?"

Raleigh twists under Mako's feet in his lap to see him as he stalks from entryway to the kitchen of the little apartment, then gives up and looks back at his movie.  "I am not my brother's keeper," he points out.  "Which class?"

"It's a _400-level physics class_ ," Chuck growls, coming back into view with a beer in his hand and his shirt unbuttoned halfway to his waistline, because he, like his father, is incapable of keeping a button-down closed or a tie on.  "He doesn't fulfill a single prereq, he shouldn't be in it.  I pulled his records and fucking checked."

"Then if I had to guess, I'd say he's using it to fulfill his science requirement," Raleigh says blandly, and glances at the paper Mako's writing on, which is full of cramped equations in neat little lines.  "He's taking Mako's entry-level comp sci course, too."

"Of course he fucking is."  Chuck pops open the top of the beer on the counter, then bends down to pick up the cap, throwing it into the trash and leaning across the table crammed into one end of the living room.  "It's required.  He hasn't taken Math 140, doesn't even know how to do a fucking integral.  He _shouldn't be in my class_."

"He does, actually," Raleigh says, "He watched Khan Academy until his eyes were bleeding so he could help me with Calculus my last year of high school."

Chuck drops his head into his hands and mumbles something about idiots or Beckets, possibly both at once.  Raleigh makes the executive decision not to care.  "Why does it bother you so much that he takes your class?" Mako pipes up, "If he does not know the material, simply fail him."

"Because I know he's doing it to piss me off!"

"And it is obviously working."

Chuck makes a guttural, irritated noise.  "Isn't he humanities?  Why doesn't he take fucking Bio like everyone else?"

Raleigh and Mako look at each other and then back at him in unison.  "Probably to piss you off,"  Raleigh finally says.  "And like Mako said, it's working."

"Fucking Beckets," Chuck mutters, and knocks back way more of his beer than he should be drinking in one go.  "Go back to fucking Alaska."

"Uh-huh," Raleigh says, no longer paying attention to him.  "Can't you get your TA to write that, Mako?  It's pretty basic stuff."

"I write, he grades," she says absently.  "If you want to be helpful, you can type this up for me."

"Whipped," Chuck sneers as he watches Raleigh pull up a Word window over the movie he's no longer even pretending to watch.

"You sound like Yancy."

"Come over here and say that to my fucking face, Becket."

"Chuck, get me a calculator," Mako cuts in, and Chuck hands over his phone instantly, walking over to drop it in her lap, calculator app already open.  "You see," she says as she hands it back to him without even looking at it, "you're both whipped.  Stop fighting."

"Oi!"

"I love you," Raleigh says, barely restraining a laugh, and leans over to kiss her cheek.


	2. B is for Bar/Pub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - bar/pub. feat. bartender!yancy and waiter!chuck, as well as a brief appearance by better waiter!raleigh.
> 
> i cheated and just used one of the bars my friends and i go to as the setting for this so i wouldn't have to think about how to logically set up a pub.
> 
> and i'm starting to think most of these things are going to be chuck and yancy sniping at each other or 'sneakily' flirting.
> 
> also, it's entirely possible i'll do like 5 of these tonight because it's friday and i have nothing to do and no bedtime and they take me like five minutes apiece.

"You should have Mako wait tables, she's prettier," Yancy says idly as he passes the order slip over his shoulder to Aleksis in the kitchen.  "Better tips."

"Shut the fuck up, Becket, I'm gorgeous," Chuck informs him, pointing a straw at him.

Yancy appears to actually look him over before responding to that, eyes raking slowly up his body to come back to his face.

Probably trying to make him uncomfortable.

Prick.

"You'd have potential if you did something with your hair."

"'s a shame there's nothing to be done about your face."

"Wow," Yancy says, and pauses, looking over Chuck's shoulder.  After a moment, he pulls three glasses onto the counter and calls, "Alfredo!" into the kitchen before he grabs about six bottles between his fingers and starts actually doing his fucking job.  Chuck turns a little to see what had prompted him actually doing his fucking job, but all he sees is Raleigh Becket's stupid smiling face as he talks to a table full of increasingly more drunk college kids, two or three of whom he thinks he recognizes.

"Are you two idiots actually telepathic?" He asks, turning back.

"We have a code," Yancy explains, as he starts recapping bottles and putting them away.   "Much more efficient than talking."

"For _every_ menu item and drink?" Chuck says incredulously.

"It's alphabetic and we use abbreviations," Raleigh pipes up as he walks up behind him and grabs the glasses, apparently not realizing how absolutely lame it is that the two of them actually spent time creating and memorizing a nonverbal set of instructions for a shitty pub gig.  "Thanks, Yance."

"You're welcome," Yancy says, and smiles after his brother before he returns his attention to Chuck.  "See?  Mako's prettier than him, too, but _he's_ friendly.  Still bringing in more tips than you.  You could try smiling a little, it might help."

"Don't you have drunk women to be slutting it up for?"

Yancy glances down the bar and sighs, looking somewhat mournful.  Fuck the Beckets and their fucking puppy eyes, honestly.  "Yes, but they're drunk enough that I actually feel a little bad about taking them for everything they have."

"Don't," Chuck orders, and turns around to lean against the bar and check over his tables, "Fleece the hell out of them.  And give me another fucking Stoli and cranberry for the bloke at table four.  Make it mostly cranberry or water it down, he's drunk enough not to notice."

Yancy's already turning around to obey, but Chuck catches the wicked grin he's turning on the wall of bottles before he crouches to get at the fridge, disappearing below the level of the bar.  "Worried about him getting home safe?"

Chuck levels the place he used to be with a glare.  "Stoli's not cheap, dipshit."

"Sure," Yancy grins, popping back up facing him, deliberately too close to the edge of the bar so he's right in Chuck's space.  He misses clipping his chin with the top of his head by about a centimeter, and Chuck startles back to avoid something that wouldn't have hit him, tempted for half a second to come back with a right hook, because fuck knows Yancy would deserve it.  "I have your number, Chuckles, you're a sweetheart."

"For the hundredth fucking time," Chuck growls, grabbing the drink from him the second it's made, "do not fucking call me that."

"Once you've said the word 'fucking' a hundred times it loses all its meaning," Yancy calls after his retreating back.

If his hands weren't full and he didn't have a job to keep he'd flip the bastard off.


	3. C is for Criminals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - criminals. feat. bank robbers raleigh and yancy and cops chuck and mako, although that is never specified.
> 
> this is like twice as long as they other ones because i got into it. i'm so sorry. please dont let me get into it more
> 
> devious yancy is my fave.
> 
> maybe one day i'll write something not about yancy. today is not that day, though

Here's the thing: Yancy Becket never has a plan B.

Well, right now, _Paul Harvey_ never has a plan B, if anyone should ask, and that's what all his ID says, because he has never been anything other than thorough when he plans one of these things.  Raleigh doesn't quite understand all of his process, not because he can't understand it but because Yancy doesn't want him to, but every new town they move to involves a new set of fake identities, generated by google because his brother doesn't trust himself with randomness.

And he doesn't trust Raleigh with the inner workings of this thing, and that grates on him.

Because, you know, if he had any idea how Yancy planned heists maybe he wouldn't be here.  Pressed against the wall below the window.

The fucking _shot-out window_.  In the bank that has turned into a _hostage situation._ Not much of one, admittedly, since Raleigh's at least fifty percent sure his brother wouldn't actually kill anyone.

Well, maybe about twenty-five percent, because if there's anything he's learned about Yancy since he was seventeen and his brother had come home with groceries properly for the first time in a year, refusing to tell him where he'd gotten the money for it, it's that Yancy has very few limits to what he'll do when he thinks Raleigh's life is on the line.

It's gotten a little bigger than pocketing someone else's wallet since then.  Yancy won't tell him what precisely they're into, but he keeps taking phone calls he refuses to talk about, pulls crazy shit Raleigh knows they don't need to do anymore and won't tell him why, and Raleigh hates that, too, but Yancy won't budge on it, obviously doesn't want Raleigh any deeper into this than he's already strong-armed Yancy into letting him.

But this is kind of pretty deep, crouched in glass shards while his brother reloads his gun and taps him on the knee with the barrel, whispers to him, "Go get the middle-aged guy next to the woman in red.  Knock him out in the bathroom and change into his clothes.  If they don't fit, use your belt to deal with the pants and tuck the shirt tight.  Don't bother about the jacket and remember the tie.  And lock him in when you're done."

" _Why_?"

"Be really fucking fast," Yancy orders him instead of answering, so Raleigh obeys, crawls across the floor to stay below the line of the window, because even if Yancy won't fucking talk to him anymore, he trusts his older brother.  "How many of you are there?" he hears Yancy call out the window, slowly standing against the wall next to the frame.

"You are surrounded," replies a female voice, and the last thing he catches sight of before he ducks into the bathroom with the guy at gunpoint is his brother's razor-sharp smile, the one he gets when he thinks he has the upper hand, only he totally fucking doesn't have it right now, so Raleigh doesn't know what to make of that.

He feels kind of bad about knocking the guy out, since he looks like he's about to wet his suit trousers, and if Raleigh has to wear those, he'd really rather they weren't disgusting.  So he just waves the gun vaguely, hopes he doesn't look too stupid, and says, "Strip."

When they're all done with that, he decides to ignore Yancy and uses the guy's tie to lash his wrists to the rail on the wall in the handicapped stall.  Since the pants fit well enough, he uses his own belt to tie the guy's arms together too, make it hard for him to get up without wrenching a shoulder pretty seriously.  It won't hold him for that long, but... probably long enough.  Shots ring out and he twitches, but he doesn't hear anyone yelling, so it's probably fine.

Slipping out, he finds his way back to Yancy, who is now on the other side of the window.  "There's no more'n three of them, judging by the number of shots that were fired at me just now," his brother tells him.  "But backup isn't going to be more than a couple of minutes away, so we gotta get going, kiddo."

"And how're you planning on that?"

If his voice is a little acidic he thinks he can be forgiven.

"Don't panic," Yancy says, and that's about all the warning Raleigh gets before there's a bag over his head.  "Just stumble a little and struggle half-heartedly."

"What the fuck," Raleigh spits, muffled by the cloth.

"And don't talk."

Yancy vanishes from his side, and it's a little hard not to panic.  "I'm coming out," his brother calls, a tremor in his voice that definitely wasn't there before.  "Don't shoot."

"What," Raleigh hisses, distracted from the blackness.

"Shut up," Yancy says, and two shots ring out, following close on the heels of each other, close to him--clearly Yancy's fire.  Someone behind them cries out, pained, and Raleigh feels the blood drain out of his face, but Yancy's dragging him to his feet, holding him in front of him--he can feel the wind on his exposed neck, and knows he's facing the window.

His brother pushes him out the door, stumbling, and he can feel Yancy pulling the gloves off his hands where he's holding them behind Raleigh's back.  "You fire and I'll shoot him," Yancy says coolly, and the hot mouth of a gun touches Raleigh's chin, making him squirm in Yancy's arms.  "There's two people bleeding out in there.  One of 'em's unconscious in the bathroom.  You let me go and deal with them and I'll let him out in a couple of miles."

Frankly, if Raleigh didn't know Yancy would never, ever pull that trigger, he'd be terrified himself. He's kind of terrified anyway.

His brother's a good actor.

There's a clattering noise, the sound of footsteps, as someone obviously runs towards the door.  "You too, sweetheart," Yancy says, obviously to someone else, and presses the barrel harder into Raleigh's chin, flicking off the safety even as he squeezes Raleigh's wrist, reassuring.

It really doesn't help that much.

Then there's a muffled, furious curse in a deep voice and the noise of somebody else running for the door, and after a moment, Yancy starts backing up, still holding Raleigh in front of him.  When his brother rips off the bag, they're around the corner, in the shadow of an apartment building, and Yancy shoves him down the street in the direction he knows the car is.  " _Go_ ," he says.

The moment they're in the car and gently merging into the center lane on the main street, losing themselves, hopefully, among the traffic, Raleigh hits Yancy in the shoulder. "You shot somebody!"

"In the _foot_."  Yancy's eyes are trained on the road, his knuckles white on the wheel.  "I needed a distraction so no one would run out with us and something to make us the lesser priority.  We got lucky, kid, two off-duty rookies with no hostage negotiation training, if I don't miss my guess.  Still have to get out of Dodge.  Those two could ID me no problem."

Not for the first time, Raleigh thinks to himself that his brother is much more devious than he looks.

Never a plan B, but always a few aces up his sleeve.


	4. D is for Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - dragons. feat. dragon-taming princess mako mori and turned-on-by-how-terrified-he-is knight raleigh.
> 
> i didn't want to do a single one of the d's, tbh. i would do 'detectives' but i already have plans for something like that for the l's or the f's, so... i was down to 'demons' or 'dragons'.
> 
> and i probably could have gone with pern or eragon or something but WHERE IS THE FUN IN THAT.
> 
> actually pern could be fun but i think it's been done before. idk about this one but its three am so y'all can fight me

The princess is beautiful, but she doesn't look a damn thing like her pictures.

For one, the princess in the drawings was much younger and much more terrified-looking and significantly more helpless, if the fluttering lines of her hands were anything to go by.

For another, the princess in the pictures was in the claws of a dragon.

And this one appears to have the dragons in her claws, as it were.

"You're not what I expected," he says, as one of them slithers across the ground towards him, keeping his sword pointed at it, more out of reflex than any particular anticipation of violence.  He knows what an attack looks like, and this isn't it, but--any lizard the size of a horse is menacing even without its fangs out, that's all.

She's silent, for a long time, as the shining black scales curl tight around his feet, putting him in a circle of reptile flesh--a vulnerable position for both of them, really, because he knows where to cut, but he's also in a bad place to strike from, hemmed in on all sides.  "Um," he continues, as it turns its ugly face up towards him, tongue flicking out, long and blue, between its teeth.  Which, now he's looking at them, are in fact very sharp.  "Would you mind calling off the dogs?"

"She's not a dog," she corrects him, her first words, deeper than he'd expected.  Her head tilts slightly to the side--it's not a human action, and that probably speaks to how long she's been with these two.

Three, actually, there's another uncurling from the maw of the cave behind her, standing next to the one that's ringing _her_ feet.  Maybe more than three, he can't see very far into the cave.

"Why aren't you attacking?" she asks, brushing back long, dark hair from her face.  He suspects it's rather difficult to cut by without help.  "The others all have."

"You look like you have this pretty well under control," Raleigh explains, voice quiet because he feels like if he raises it wrong he'll get a faceful of dragon fangs.

Its eyes are whirling.  He wants to stab it, because he's... you know.  He's scared.

But that would be a really bad move.  So instead he shrugs.  "I'll leave, if you want to let me go."

"You are not a very good knight," she says, raising one eyebrow slowly.

"I'm very out of practice," he replies honestly, and drops his sword, because really, at this point, there's no real point in having it.  When it hits the ground the dragon around his legs tightens until his balance tips, hissing at him, teeth coming really, uncomfortably close to his face.  " _Very_ out of practice," he repeats.

"Surely you had time to practice before you came.  It has been a long time since I was taken."

"You've, uh, run through a lot of knights.  Your father called in a favour on pretty short notice, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't understand the situation, in retrospect."

"My father?" she asks, blinking, and her eyes narrow.

The dragon around his feet disappears so fast he almost stumbles, sliding across the ground like it has no legs to roil around her feet with the other two.

Two more start unfurling from the cave, and he picks his sword back up and sheathes it, because frankly, one person stands exactly no chance here.  Five fucking dragons and she's tamed them, somehow, which he's never seen anyone do with even one--in fact, he grew up with _fairytales_ about trained dragons.

The one that's recently joined the others from his side tips its head up at her and makes a little wheezing noise, and she strokes a hand down its scales until it starts humming like the most terrifying cat Raleigh has ever seen.  "Shh," she says, as if he's not there.  "I want to talk to this one.  Maybe later."

That doesn't bother him as much as it probably should.


	5. E is for Escorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - escorts. feat. escort!yancy and embarrassed customer!herc.
> 
> i didn't want to do a single one of the e's and i REALLY didn't want to do the research associated with the 'elizabethan era' one or bother with the syntax. and i thought 'everybody lives' was kind of a copout since i've written like 50,000 words about yancy not dying. i know he's not everybody but you GET MY DRIFT.
> 
> also: again, some day i will write something not about yancy. but today is not that day.
> 
> and i might be doing something else in the criminals universe. fuck me

Hercules Hansen can get his own fucking dates, but he doesn't really have time for it, right now.

But the boy's always needling him about not getting any, and so's the press, and there's a function coming up and he really does not have the energy to go out and pick up some bird who thinks he's actually interested and break her heart later, and furthermore, someone who knows the score will play the part much better.

And fuck it, he's an adult fucking man who can pay a date if he wants to.

Maybe he's trying a little too hard to justify this to himself.

Whatever.

Maybe if he were totally shameless like his idiot kid this wouldn't bother him so much, but it does, mostly because he knows exactly how hard Chuck would laugh if he knew about this.  Thank god the little fucker's only going to be seeing the photos afterwards, because he's smart enough to tell in a hot second if he were there in person, no matter how good an actor whoever he ends up asking for ends up being.

The benefit of this particular website is that they don't have pictures readily available to the internet that anyone can search this bloke's face back to, but it also means he's going to have to take the heat of having it be a bloke, which is not ideal, but also a great 'fuck you' to the higher ups.

He's thinking too much about it.  It's not like he's paying for sex, even though, yeah, that is typically what an escort service means.

He makes the call and lays down the rules and has some rules laid down for him and hangs up and is tempted to throw the stupid phone at the wall, but waits instead for it to ping with the list of faces.  He copies the first one on the list and sends it back without thinking about it, some lazy-looking blonde kid who's probably-- _probably_ \--not young enough to be his son.

And if he's going to spitefully make Stacker deal with the fallout of him showing up with a man, he's not going to make it worse by showing up with some jailbait.

He's going to catch hell for this later anyway, but fuck it.

The guy shows up five minutes early, day of, looking lazy and bored, an expression that disappears like smoke off his face in a second flat when Herc opens the door into a generic smile.  "Pizza delivery," he says, which is made twice as ridiculous by the grey suit he's wearing, no tie.

Herc rolls his eyes and reaches forwards to button the top three buttons on the the guy's shirt, then tosses one of Chuck's ties at him, the one he'd decided not to wear.  "Put that on."

"Can't have me _looking_ like a whore."  His voice is slow and amused, verging on a drawl.  Still, he clearly knows how to tie a tie, even if he doesn't look terribly pleased about it, fingers tucking it easily.

It doesn't quite go with the suit, but Herc could not possibly care less.  "I'm not paying you for that tonight.  What do I call you?"

"Sure you aren't.  I'm Yancy.  But you feel free to assign me any name you want as long as you tell me first so I can respond to it.  And there's no way on earth you actually go by Hercules, so out with it."

"Herc," Herc tells him, and grabs his hat off the hook by the door.  "And your name's fine, as long as you mock up some last name and can lie your way out of a paper bag, I don't give a shit."

The indolent smile from the picture uncurls, and Yancy leans up to kiss his cheek.  "You bet I can.  Let's get going, baby."

"Don't call me that."

"Sugar?  Darling?  Pumpkin, maybe?"

"Can I get a refund if I send you back?"

"Nope," Yancy says, popping the 'p' sound and grinning.  "But I promise to be more biddable arm candy when we actually get there."

It's going to be a long fucking night.


	6. F is for Future/Fusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - future & and alternate universe - fusion all at once because i'm a cheater and i looked ahead and 'star trek' does not appear on the 's' list but you know i want to write that shit. feat. enterprising young engineers!chuck and mako and first officer!herc.
> 
> after this i'm going to do some more chem and work on lighthouse in a storm. probably.

"What the _hell_ are you two _doing down here_?"

With all the sense of urgency that comes from obeying military orders for their entire lives, Chuck and Mako scramble upright and to attention, Chuck banging his head on the edge of the console as he does so, swearing loudly before he drags himself to stand in line with her and face his father.  "Improving energy efficiency by rerouting power in a more logical manner, Commander," Mako answers after a moment, voice tightly controlled, lips pale with tension.

"The Engineering sensors on the bridge are going insane and intra-vessel communications just went down," Herc tells them, teeth grit, " _Fix it_."

Chuck and Mako look at each other, identical looks of confusion on their faces.

"Uh," Chuck says, and pulls his sleeves down from where they've been shoved up past his forearms, regaining a faint, if crumpled and dirty, sense of uniform standards, "We weren't anywhere near the communications array."

Herc looks between them, and Mako drops to her knees and inches back under the console, half her body disappearing into the panel.  "One moment please, sir," she says, voice muffled through the plastic and metal.

He can see his son conspicuously not looking at her legs stretched out on the floor, and wonders how they'd both fit into that space together.  Glances at Chuck, who stares him dead in the eyes and tries to hold a poker face he isn't very good at.  "Do not," he mouths, drawing a silent line across his neck, and Chuck's jaw visibly clenches, hands tightening into fists.

"Fuck off, old man."

Mako pulls herself out from under the console again, looking up at them, looking at each other.  "The communications should not be disrupted.  Chuck, check the panel."

When he walks past his father Chuck shoves their shoulders together, trying to unbalance him.  "Lights're on," he says after he's been at the switchboard a moment, "Everything reads operational.  Power's routing through just fine, but I can't get through to the bridge, there's external interference jamming the boards.  Think you have problems to worry about than us trying to take the strain off the dilithium crystals, _Dad_."

Herc curses and whips around, heading for the door at a jog.  "Get everything back online.  Make sure we can go to warp."

"D'you think he knows how power is routed on this ship at _all_ ," Chuck says contemptuously, as Mako slides back under the panel.

"It isn't his job to know," she answers, voice sharp.  "It is yours.  Hand me a probe and start checking the displays."


	7. G is for Game of Thrones Fusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - game of thrones fusion. feat. former lannister bannermen!beckets, disgraced gold cloak!chuck, and lord commander of the night's watch!pentecost. all your faves ended up on the wall.
> 
> i was going to do 'gender changes' but i didn't want to write about all the people with unisex names, i wanted to write about herc and stacker, and i couldn't bring myself to butcher their names by switching the genders OR not butcher them and pretend 'hercules' is a girl's name. unfortunately that means you get to deal with this train wreck that i thought way too much about.
> 
> i was evidently not lying about all of these things being chuck and yancy hate!flirting

The North is cold.

Castle Black, if anything, is _colder_.

Stone is supposed to insulate, Chuck thinks, but here it doesn't seem to.  Or at least not as well as it should.  The wind stops inside the walls, but it doesn't warm much until he steps into the main hall, which is packed with bodies, and he doesn't realize how tense his muscles have been against the chill until they begin to relax.

"Sit down with the other recruits," his father says, voice rough; the first words he's spoken to his son in ten years.

Then he's gone, moving past him and away, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the hall.

"Here, Hansen," someone calls, and he twitches in that direction, seeing a table full of grinning faces that he instantly dislikes, simply because they make him uncomfortable.  He's uncomfortable with this entire situation, with the cold and the Watch and his father and the friendliness he doesn't know how to deal with.  No one is friendly with the gold cloaks in the Landing, not even the other gold cloaks, and he doesn't understand how to react to it here.

But he assumes these are the other recruits, so he sits, stiffly.

"Comes like a dog to the call," someone drawls, and Chuck's head jerks towards the sound to see a couple of blondes sitting shoulder to shoulder, one smirking, the other obviously trying not to look amused.  "You might do."

He bristles, hand twitching towards his sword, but two boys on either side of him clap their hands over his mouth as he opens it to say something cutting in return.  "Don't take the bait," one warns.  Looking at them, he sees they're identical, dark-haired and grinning sharply.

"Yancy tries to get all the new recruits into trouble," the second blonde explains, laughing it off, and extends a hand over the table, which Chuck grits his teeth and doesn't take.  After a moment, it disappears, like the smile from his face.

"How long was the travel?" asks the delicate boy sitting across from him, as if passing the conversation down the table.

"Long," he bites out.

"All the way from Kings' Landing comes the babe," Yancy says, and grins directly at him.  "Are you cold?  Lost your cloak, ser?"

The boys on either side of him put their hands over his mouth again, a third pair of arms wraps around him from behind to keep him in his seat.  "Don't take the bait," the one to his left says again.

Yancy smiles again, this time with less of a sharp edge to it.  "You can thrash me in training tomorrow for it, Hansen.  I like a good fight."

"I'll give you one," he promises.


	8. H is for Hollywood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - hollywood. feat. actors!herc and stacker and the Publicity Nightmare from Hell.
> 
> stacker/herc. because i can and will drag team hot dads into this.
> 
> featuring more of herc's disdain for publicity lmao

"Wake up, Hercules."

"'m up," he lies into the pillow, then raises his head enough to stare at the headboard as he turns his head, eyes narrowed, voice still rough with sleep.  "Why the fuck'm I up?"

"Because you're in the news," Stacker tells him, and throws his phone into the bed with him as he closes his computer and walks towards the bathroom.

"Oh, fuck me."

"I don't think that will be very helpful, given why you're in the news."  Which just--sounds like something that means he's not getting laid again until he's fifty.  He reaches out to grab the phone, turning onto his back to slide it open, ignoring how it's pinging with texts and not really relishing the prospect of turning his own phone on.

The shower turns on, and the open door is not an invitation to join, just an invitation to talk, because Stacker does not do anything in showers except shower, which Herc is currently grateful for because his refractory period was never half an hour and it's only getting longer as he gets old.  He scrolls up from the bottom of the article to the title, because he doesn't have time for all this fucking text at whatever ungodly hour it is.

The article title reads _IS HERC GAY_ , and Herc is going to personally shove the face of the uncreative editor of TMZ, if such a person actually exists, through the screen of his own computer.  "You have got to be fucking joking," he says loudly, feeling his mouth pull down in a scowl.

"Scroll down."

There's a set of pictures there, and they're pretty fucking incriminating, yeah, a couple of grainy pictures from last night that definitely feature his hands distinctly below the belt and his shoulders covering Stacker's profile against the wall around the back of the hotel.  "How the _fuck_ did they even catch that?" he asks incredulously.  "My fucking kid's never going to let me live this down."  He grabs for his phone and switches it on, grimacing when it starts buzzing immediately and doesn't stop.  He opens Chuck's text first because he doesn't really care to deal with the rest of them and immediately wants to throw his phone, because all it is is a picture of a gossip magazine cover in a grocery store aisle with the same pictures and the words _fucking hilarious_ written under it.  "Fucking vultures."

"Call me before you make your statement, if you would."

The shower turns off, and Herc wanders in to take his turn, squeezing past Stacker where he's at the mirror, towel wrapped around his waist, shaving.  "Where're you headed?"

"Miss Mori is sending a car in fifteen minutes."

"Leaving me to the wolves, huh?"  He turns the water on cold, because today is already fucking awful, so why not.

"You're the only one here who's not out, love."

"You're not out with me," Herc mumbles, trying to avoid a mouthful of shampoo.

"Do you really want any of this to be public, or does misery just love company?"

"'s public already.  Producers might even like it, bet it brings in a few voyeuristic fuckers to the theatres."

"Take your shower, Hercules.  And shave before you leave unless you want your real hair colour all over the rags.  I'll call you later."

Herc grunts as he hears Stacker leaving the bathroom, staring at the wall.

Isn't every day that gets so shit so early.


	9. I is for Indiana Jones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - indiana jones. feat. mako as indiana jones and raleigh as her trusty bond girl. i was gonna go the easy route and make herc indiana jones but that was FAR TOO OBVIOUS.
> 
> but you better fucking believe if 'steve irwin' pops up under 's' chuck's gonna be takin that hit.
> 
> ...i like this one. paititi is a lost city rumoured to be in the back of the beyond of the brazilian jungles, by the way.

She picks him up in Manaus.

He's standing behind the counter of the bar of the restaurant she comes into at three in the afternoon when no one is there, shirt sleeves rolled up around his elbows and smiling slightly, not coming over to bother her past asking if she wants anything before he tells her the wifi password, warns her the connection is terrible, and leaves her alone.  Stands behind the bar and idly doodles on a napkin for an hour while she curls up in the corner table and does her research.

Navigating the rainforest by herself is going to be difficult, and she doesn't speak much Portuguese or any of the native languages--so probably she shouldn't have taken this job.  But she wanted the challenge, and now she has it.  


" _Fala inglês_?" Mako asks him, almost two hours in, and he blinks, head jerking upright as if he's surprised at being addressed.

"I'm American," he responds, and then pauses.  "I speak Japanese, too, if I'm not pinning your accent wrong.  If you'd prefer that."

He's a white American boy in Brazil, she's not sure she trusts his Japanese to tell her what she needs to know.  "English is fine.  Do you know of a guide for the forest?"

"I know some guys--" he starts, but she cuts him off.

"A map, I mean, Mister--?"

"Raleigh.  Just Raleigh."  He laughs, quietly.  "A map isn't much good in a jungle, Miss--?"

It would be for her.  She finds his laughter insulting.  In fact there is no map for where she is going; she simply doesn't want to lose the way to get back.  "Mori," she says coldly, and watches the smile leave his face. "And I did not ask for an opinion, I asked for assistance."

"Yeah," he says softly, the smile coming back.  "You did.  There aren't really any good maps, no.  So much of it hasn't been explored."

It sounds like exactly what she likes.  "Hmm."

"You make that noise every so often," he observes, resting his chin on the heel of one of his hands.  "Not finding what you're looking for?"

"No one has yet found what I'm looking for, Raleigh."

He flashes her a brighter smile this time.  "I can get someone to draw you a part of a map, if you want.  My brother and I used to go out looking for it, too."

"It?" she says mildly, starting to compose an email home.

"Paititi."

Her head comes up, hair falling back from her eyes.  "You didn't find it?"

"No one has, like you said.  We never actually looked along the Rio Negro."

"You live here."

"I live here because we never looked here.  I don't really go exploring anymore, Miss Mori."  This time the grin is a little wistful, or maybe it's a little sad.  She tells herself she doesn't care about what pretty Americans feel about the jungle.  "I was never much good at it anyway."

As two men she recognizes from pictures walk into the café, she switches to Japanese.   "Take me to the ones you said could draw me the map later.  And don't discuss with these two anything we've discussed."

" _Que_?" he asks, blinking, the picture of confusion, and for a moment her heart sinks, thinking he hasn't understood.  Then he switches to accented English that sounds nothing like the English he's just been speaking with her.  "Ma'am, um, do you speak English?  Do you want to order now?"

Not a bad liar, then.  "Just water," she tells him, colouring her English more with Japanese than she does ordinarily.  " _Obrigado_."


	10. J is for Journalism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - journalism. feat. editor!chuck writing grad school applications and journalist!yancy editing them, as well as some more hate flirting, because idk dude gotta keep up my streak.
> 
> regrettably, i have spent the last two hours writing 2000 words of escort!yancy, which will be at least 8000 words when i am done, instead of being a productive individual because i am apparently incapable of writing these gross little things without expanding on them.
> 
> so here. have this. and know that i am ashamed

"Jesus, Hansen, you can't write for shit," Yancy says, licking his thumb and flipping through the pages, evidently counting them.  "Stick to butchering, would you?  This hurt my eyes."

Chuck takes offense to the insinuation that he is less than amazing at anything he chooses to do, but also recognizes that he needs to practice some things before he is perfect at them, so he bites back a remark that sounds in his head like _doesn't that make you and your idiot brother a couple of cows_ and grits out, "Yeah, that's real constructive, Becket."

Yancy shoves his reading glasses up his nose and smirks, because he's a tremendous cunt.  "Why don't you go ask your dad for help?  Isn't that, like, his job or something?"

"I am _not_ asking Herc for help," Chuck growls, and snatches the papers back.  The reason for this, which he intends to never, ever reveal to Yancy, is that Herc edited his undergrad application essays, and alternated between circling everything because everything was terrible and circling nothing because everything was so terrible he didn't know what to circle.  If Chuck was going to write another essay about his personal quirks, he'd write it about the fact that despite the fact that all his income comes from ripping other people new ones about their writing, he cannot, in fact, write anything good himself.  There's a _reason_ he edits and doesn't write.  Being a dick is right in his wheelhouse, having people be a dick to him is not.  "And you can fuck right off, too."

Yancy reaches out as he goes to leave and reels him back in by hooking a finger through his belt loop.  "Uh-uh.  Come back here, my sweet summer child.  You can't send those out as is."

Chuck refrains from smacking at his hand because he's not a _child_ , but it's a close thing.  "Get off me."

"Give me your essays, Charlie X.  I'll return some actual constructive criticism, just let me have some time to finish the copies I'm doing for tomorrow's go 'round and I'll take a look at 'em."

"Are you deaf, you handsy piece of shit?  Get off me.  And don't call me Charlie."

"You're too young to understand," Yancy sighs, and extracts the papers from his fingers before he lets go of his belt loop.  "I'll have the copies on your desk by four, these maybe tomorrow."

"If you let your brother read them," Chuck warns him, pointing a pen menacingly at him as he walks out, "I'll start clipping all your fucking adjectives again."

"The horror, the horror," Yancy calls absently from behind him.


	11. K is for Kindergarten & Preschool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - kindergarten & preschool. feat. stacker and herc dropping off the kids at preschool. also feat. possible angie/herc/stacker because?? do i need a reason. this is trash
> 
> the reason this one took me more than the usual five minutes is that i fucking hate writing children and typically avoid it whenever possible. however, i had no other choice, since there were only four things in the 'k' list and the other three were crossovers with things i do not know about. i skirted the prompt a little but y'all can fight me.
> 
> it also probably took me longer because escort!yancy is up to 8000 words now and they still have not fucked.
> 
> sobs. why cant i just leave well enough alone

Angie insists on dressing Chuck the morning they drop him off at preschool, even though--in Herc's opinion--the little fucker actually does a pretty decent job dressing himself.  Can't tie his shoes or button anything for shit, but he can get his kit _on_ , at least.

It's not like he doesn't have the same urge, to fuss over the kid before he gives him up to strangers for the first time.

But _he's_ not giving into it.

Because _independence_ is an important thing his boy is going to learn.

Stacker thinks he's ridiculous, and has said so every time either Angie or Herc has even attempted to bring him in on one side or the other of their fights about this, because Chuck is _three_ , but Herc refuses to budge.  That said, his not budging doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot, because he's got two other adults around who are fully willing to budge.  But still, Stacker doesn't know what he's fucking talking about.   _His_ kid is the quiet, biddable one.

When his wife finally delivers his son and kisses the both of them goodbye before dashing out the door to catch the bus for work, Herc turns to Stacker and raises an eyebrow, which is enough contact for him to get across the general gist of _let's get going_.

"Mako," the Marshal calls down the hall.  "It's time to go."

Obediently, she comes padding out, fully-clothed because, like Herc fucking told them, three-year-olds can dress themselves, and sits down on the floor, silently presenting her shoes for tying.  Stacker's not a small man, and bending down over her, he seems like a giant, broad shoulders curving over her.  It's kind of fascinating how delicate his blunt fingers are on the laces, which Herc knows is a job because hasn't he done it for both of them enough times?

The drive is mostly quiet, except for Chuck in the backseat asking dumb questions and Stacker answering him with more patience than Herc could probably bring himself to afford.

Chuck loves the place instantly, which means that Mako hates it, which means that Herc is given a distraction from his pointless hurt about his son being so eager to leave him.   _His_ kid's off doing whatever three-year-olds do when they're in a herd, Stacker's kid is holding onto his shirt and shaking her head over and over again, her hair all in her face and her nose turned stubbornly down.

The thing about parenting that he's learned in the last three years is that none of the three of them ever have any idea how to actually do it, and the worst fucking part is usually walking the fine, almost invisible, line between being firm and not being a dickhead, as Angie puts it.

Stacker's walking the line.

"They never cry for very long," the woman at the front desk assures Herc, who is watching with his arms crossed.  He gives her a look.

"Mine didn't cry at all."

"Some of them are like that?"

"Oi," he says, and walks over to nudge Stacker with his ankle.  "We've gotta get going."

Stacker gives him a look that says, specifically and eloquently, that he needs to shut up.  Then he turns back to his daughter and says something in Japanese, which, Herc assumes, means he means business.  At least that's what it usually seems to mean.

She lets go of him abruptly and nods.  Then remembers their many, many conversations about _speaking_ , and says, "Yes."

The moment they get out in the car and start pulling out, Herc looks over at him in the passenger's seat and grins, slow.  "You want to go right back in, don't you?"

"Just drive, Hercules."


	12. L is for Law Enforcement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - law enforcement. feat. cops!chuck and mako after [this.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3575072/chapters/7900785) because i still cannot leave well enough alone lmaooooo
> 
> newly dubbed cops&robbers 'verse. might be getting a sequel. if i ever finish escort!yancy verse and don't want to cry myself to sleep

"I fucking _told_ you we should have waited," Chuck snarls, hands tight on the wheel.  His cheeks are stained bright with colour, sweaty hair sticking up ridiculously where he's been running his hands through it during his evidently stressful call back to the station.  "I can't believe we fucking _fell_ for that!"

Mako doesn't reply, white-lipped and frustrated-looking.

She doesn't like losing any more than he does.

"Pieces of shit," Chuck continues, glaring at the red light they're sitting at like it's done him a personal wrong.  "Bet the two of them're having a great fucking laugh right now."

He slams the door of the car harder than he really needs to when he gets out at the station.

The place is a flurry of activity.  The woman at the front desk waves at them as they come in, talking on the phone to the station a few towns over, BOLO for two males, six feet tall and blonde, wanted for assault and felony attempted theft.  Mako suddenly feels very out-of-place in her civilian clothes.  Chuck looks even worse than she; he hadn't changed out of his things from the gym before everything had happened and his agitated face is not exactly the most beautiful thing on the planet.

The next few hours pass in a blur of reports.

Chuck's mood riding home is no better than his mood on the way to the station; Mako has at least managed to get her anger under control and off her face.  "They're bringing in the fucking feds.  The feds--can you believe that?  's _our_ case, damn it--"

"Not anymore," she reminds him, voice tight.

"Should have shot that fucker right through his friend's shoulder--"

Her head whips around, even if she knows him well enough to know he would never have really fired on a potential innocent.  "You had no way of knowing he was not a civilian--"

"--I didn't _do_ it--"

"--don't _say_ it--"

"Shut up," he says, at the same time she says, "Stop talking," and for a moment, they stare at each other over the center divider in the car, neither willing to break eye contact.

Then they both do, as if they'd agreed to do it together.

After you've worked with someone enough, you become in tune to them like that.  After a long, silent time, Mako speaks again.  "I can access mobile phone GPS records.  If they're still nearby, and they might be, since we have an ABP out on them... it's possible that it could still be our jurisdiction."

"That's insane, Mori."

"But you will not argue when I do it."

"If you did it--"

Her mouth has thinned again to a determined line.  He loves it--and she knows he loves it--when she gets determined.  Not that he'd ever tell her that, but it makes him grin.  "I'm going to do it."

He's not really in the mood for smiling, today.  But he does, anyway, a dangerous gleam of teeth.  "Show me how."


	13. M is for Mob

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - mob. feat. capo bastone!mako and mob doll/right-hand man!chuck. it was gonna be raleigh, but i think he's too much of a wild card, and i am also weak for chuck/mako sometimes. this would make pentecost the capo famiglia and herc the consigliere. YOU CAN TELL I HAD WAY TOO MUCH FUN RESEARCHING THIS. even though none of these people could ever have been in the american/italian mafia lmaooo
> 
> i was going to do 'magical realism', but it got way too long lol. sobs why can't i write short. escort!yancy is up to 11k. and they've still only kissed. once.
> 
> i was listening to 'uma thurman' while writing this. the line 'bury me 'til i confess' was very helpful.

The room is small and sterile as a hospital hallway, with one thin window and a single desk, two chairs on either side of it, and a ratty couch behind it.  The building it's in is filthy, and mostly abandoned, to boot; the sort of place you could easily be killed in.  Where a gun, with a silencer, could spit a bullet straight through your forehead and the body might not be found for weeks.  A place with no cameras, with no security but the that of the family.

They don't negotiate with consultants on any territory but their own.

Stretched out on the couch with his feet crossed over one of its arms is a man with a mess of unslicked red-brown hair, loose dark trousers irreverently crumpled against the fabric of the couch--careless of the precise seams running down both legs--and shirt opened in front, hanging off his shoulders to show off the hard muscle hiding beneath his undershirt.  His posture is ultimately unthreatening, head knocked back with his throat bared, lolling across the other arm of the couch with a cigarette dangling from the hand hanging off the edge, but his grin when the consultant enters is nothing less than terrifying, baring sharp teeth and ultimate confidence.

There's a .38 Colt lying on his stomach, safety off, his other hand resting just below it as his eyes track the consultant across the room.

But it's hard to focus on him for long--the danger in the background--when there's danger in the foreground too.

The consultant begins to sweat, and the man on the couch's smile widens dangerously as he sees the dark patches at his underarms.

 _She_ isn't smiling.

She's standing, straight-backed, next to the desk, in men's clothing down to even the tie.  If he didn't know that she were a woman, he wouldn't see it; her breasts are hidden easily by four layers of cloth, although the same clothing can't quite conceal the curve of her hips. Her hands are bare and empty, but that is somehow less comforting than it should be--when she flips a hand over to greet him silently, the jacket pulls over a concealed weapon and he would be surprised if it were the only one.  Her face is expressionless under the hat that's covering her eyes, hiding the hair tucked up under it; mouth a flat, displeased line.

Or perhaps it just looks displeased because he knows it is.

"Sit down, please, Mister Brivio," she says softly, gesturing to the chair with its back to the door, which has a suit jacket slung over it, and circles to the other side of the desk, turning her back to him briefly as she does so as if she doesn't fear him at all, an attitude he is unused to.  "You made a good decision to appear when we requested it.  Chuck, please close the door."

The consultant's name is supposed to be the only one known here--he doesn't know hers, and he didn't know the man on the couch's, but now Chuck is pulling himself up, putting out his cigarette against the floor as he walks past the both of them to the door.

His piece is nowhere to be seen, and he pulls the jacket out from the back of Brivio's chair as he passes, throwing it over his shoulders but not bothering to put his arms through the sleeves.

He should not know the name.  Nervousness creeps into his voice; either way he faces his back is to one of them.  "Yes."

"But a bad decision to attempt to inform on us."

He stands to protest, facing her, ice rushing through his veins, and that's when Chuck's bullet blows through the back of his skull, entering a few inches behind his left ear and exiting through the place where his right eye socket used to be.

"Messy," she comments, eyes avoiding the gore across the desk.  "And regrettable."

He kisses her on the cheek as he passes.  "'s why I grabbed the jacket, love."


	14. N is for Not Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - not human. feat. guardian-spirits-of-various-mythologies!mako and formerly yancy, and poor, put-upon raleigh.
> 
> i was about to feel bad about not writing any newt and hermann into this, but, tbh, i just do not care about newt or hermann. that's my confession for the day. i'm sorry. all i could think about before writing this was kuro49's XZ-AO-WMD verse, so, while i tried to go another direction, if anything reads similarly, that is my bad. i'm not sure how much i like that one, i think i need another 10k words to make it good lmao

Raleigh Becket is _fragile_.

This is her first impression.

He doesn't act fragile.  He doesn't give off that aura.

But she can tell.  She can always tell.

He's _hers_ , after all.  He's in her Shatterdome.  He's under her protection.  That makes him hers.

She and her father both know why she shouldn't get into the conn-pod with him.

But it's the end of the world.  And she tells him, in the privacy of his office, eyes flaring with the destruction that is sitting just behind them, that she protects what is hers, and he is hers.

So her father gives her Raleigh Becket as a sacrifice.

For her guardianship.

He's smiling a little before they enter the Drift.

And there she sees why he's so fragile.  Yancy Becket thought he was protecting his brother, but he was tearing his mind apart every time he stepped into it, forcing all his breakable humanity into submission.  Centuries ago, Yancy Becket's kind lurked over streams and chasms and exchanged safe passage--immunity, sanctuary--for compliance.  When men dropped to their knees Yancy Becket's kind took them into their protection, and Raleigh Becket has knelt for his brother's mind far, far too many times.

She's built to be kinder than Yancy was.

Sometimes.

He tries to kneel for her, too, but she won't let him, because she doesn't trade her protection that way.  European spirits are so vicious.  She trades her protection for respect.  She trades it for love.

And those Raleigh Becket provides her in spades.

"You too," he says when they stumble out of the Drift together, expression brilliant as if it's a good thing.  "You too."

"Yes," she tells him, although she's nothing like Yancy Becket was.  "Me, too."


	15. O is for Orchestra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - orchestra. feat. probably violist!raleigh, first violinists chuck and mako, possibly trading off the position of concertmaster, conductor!stacker and orchestra mom!yancy. feat. also many bad musical puns and a little bit more flirting
> 
> i was going to do olympics. but on the other hand, i have been playing the cello in orchestras for more than half my life. so this prompt was calling to me. sweet jesus.

"Mr. Becket," Stacker calls, and both of them look up, Yancy turning around from where he's straightening his brother's tie with the stack of black folders tucked under his arm, Raleigh from idly tuning his viola one-handed.  The second the both of them realize which of them he's talking to, Raleigh looks down and Yancy walks towards him, nodding.

"What's up?"

"Yancy, where's my rosin?"

"Hang on," Yancy says, holding up a finger, and shifts the folders to his right hand to fish around in his pocket with his left and lob a little red bundle over his shoulder in the general direction of his brother's voice.  "Sorry, you were saying?"

"I was saying," Stacker continues, drily, "That the climate controls need to be readjusted.  It's too hot."

"Very true.  The warning label said not to open with a sharp instrument."

Behind him, Chuck snorts.

Yancy's mouth twitches as he shifts the folders back across his chest.  "I'm sorry, sir, did that joke fall a--uh, a little flat?"

Stacker refrains from the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose against a burgeoning headache.  "Please just go adjust the climate controls.  Mr. Hansen can hand out the music."

"I have to _practice_ ," Chuck protests, but a properly directed look quells his resistance almost immediately.  "Yes, sir."

As Yancy passes off the folders, he catches Stacker's eye, and says, utterly straight-faced, "I'm not sure that's Mr. Hansen's forte, sir."

"Fuck off, Becket."

"Think your G-string's a little tight, Chuckles," Yancy warns, and Raleigh finally loses it and cracks up laughing as he disappears backstage.

Chuck actually plucks the string one-handed before he gets the joke and goes pink about the ears.  He looks like he's about to go after Yancy, so Stacker raps the nearest music stand with the hilt of the baton to get his attention.  "Mr. Hansen.   _Pass out the music_.  Mr. Becket, control yourself."

Raleigh sobers up about as fast as Chuck starts throwing folders at people.


	16. P is for Photographer/Pre-Canon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - photographer & alternate universe - pre-canon. feat. tbh this isn't even an au i just wanted to write this. i almost wrote 'piracy', but couldn't keep a straight face long enough, so... have some becket feels, i guess. i unsurprisingly ran long.
> 
> also, i want to say the reason this took me two days was that i spent more than five minutes on it, but the truth is that i'm balls-deep in writing escort!yancy and it's hard to switch out of that and back to this.

The picture of him and Yancy has only three corners.  And it's dirty, and it's crinkled, and his fingers have been on it so many times the colour is starting to fade in the middle, and it's not a very good picture anyway; taken in shitty lighting in a bar somewhere off the Academy campus, the closest either of them ever got to a Friday night at college.  Closest either of them got to college, as a matter of fact.

Tendo'd nicked the camera.  Because Raleigh, he'd never bothered taking many pictures of his brother or himself, much less together.

There'd never been any point; they weren't ever apart.

He knows Yancy took about half a billion of him, of the two of them, doing _stupid_ things mostly, on those cheap disposable cameras he was aways buying, but he sent all of those to Jazmine, and Raleigh hadn't had the heart, after Knifehead, to contact his sister at all, much less ask her for any of them.  By the time she'd been informed of Yancy's death, he'd been gone, and--according to Tendo, who'd winced to tell him--she'd arrived at the Icebox only to find that he'd disappeared off the grid already.

After Pitfall, though--after Pitfall he can't avoid her any longer because everyone in the world knows who and where Raleigh Becket is.  She technically needs security clearance to get to him, but Mako recognizes her from his memories when she comes past the desk from buying a bottle of painkillers from the hotel store, arguing hotly with a member of their security detail, and brings her right up, releases her into their room, and closes the door behind the three of them.

He's grateful at the same time he's not; Jazmine at twenty-one delivers an uppercut that knocks him backwards onto the bed, the movement so reminiscent of the one Yancy used every time they got in a fight to startle their opponent he almost goes to counter it before he remembers he doesn't know if Jazmine can take the counter.  Then she starts yelling at him in French while he's holding his face and Mako is holding her back from him, so fast it's hard to understand her even though he's fluent.

That might be, too, that neither Yancy or Mom ever taught him how to curse in French.

By the time she's calm enough that Mako lets her go, she stomps out of the room without saying another word to him.

When she reappears the next day, their conversation is much calmer.  And she pulls out a little box, maybe four by six by four, and out spill all of those stupid pictures Yancy took.

There must be a hundred at least.

The first twenty are all Gipsy, the next ten or so are all the Shatterdome, Anchorage, the Academy.  There are a few of Tendo or Alison or the techs or the K-Sci folks.  She's got them ordered by subject and date.

The rest are all of him.  Or them.

There's two he remembers taking, of Yancy sleeping, because like hell Yancy was ever going to wake up in time to beat him to that.  But other than that, they're all of Raleigh or the two of them.

One grainy one taken from above of Raleigh shimmying up Gipsy's leg in the dark to string tinsel on her.  One of Raleigh shielding himself from a barrage of blurry objects--and yeah, he remembers that, the techs had been throwing pens at him.  One of Raleigh halfway through chewing a mouthful of food and looking ridiculous.  Yancy's written on all of them, a date on the back of every one and a comment on the front of a few.

One of them features Raleigh passed out cold, New Year's of 2018, with a fine dusting of glitter all over him.   _That_ one, Yancy autographed.  Big and loopy across Raleigh's left arm and the side of the bed.

"I was washing glitter out of places I didn't know existed for months," he tells Jazmine, and he knows his laugh is a little wet.

There are a few terrible selfies of the two of them, off-kilter and blurry because the shitty cameras Yancy had favoured hadn't had a screen, let alone a reversible camera.  In Los Angeles.  San Francisco.  Anchorage.  Manila.  Vladivostok.  Hawaii.  A few Tendo obviously took, mostly of Yancy gesturing at Raleigh's back or miming pushing him over a rail, putting bunny ears or moose antlers on him, silly, stupid little things, not a great photo album, but funny.

He's crying silently by the time she says, "This one was my favourite."

He doesn't remember this one being taken, but he knows Yancy must have handed the camera off to somebody else, because his brother is using both of his arms to try and dislodge Raleigh from his back, where he's attached himself like a koala, legs hitched up around Yancy's waist, arms in a chokehold around his neck, like a forcible piggy-back ride.  He's laughing, and Yancy is clearly cursing, and his brother has written across the bottom in capitals,

 _YOU KNOW HOW YOU WERE SAYING IT WASN'T FAIR THAT RALEIGH AND I GOT TO BE TOGETHER?  YOU CAN HAVE HIM BACK NOW, HE SUCKS_.

Raleigh cracks up laughing, because Yancy sounds so righteously indignant that he just can't help it, and it's a fucking mess because he's still crying, too.

"Can I--?"

"You can have the _copies_ ," she answers before he finishes.  "But only if you email me twice a week."

"Thanks," he tells her, and smiles into her shoulder.  "I will."


	17. Q is for Quidditch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - quidditch. feat. professional quidditch player and proficient amateur asshole!chuck, his annoyed father, and the consequences of being a dickhead.
> 
> i didn't want to write this one because i think i'm shit at writing harry potter aus. but i had no choice, because the only Q au was quidditch. woe is me.

"He _hexed_ me," Chuck complains, as Herc shoves his head down and pushes aside his hair to get a look at where the feelers are sprouting from his the back of it.  "How is this my fault?"

Herc almost wishes the boy was still crawling around, incapable of talking, but no, _those_ were the easy-to-get-rid-of side effects.  "Because you spent all fucking game provoking him.  Stop fucking moving them."

"If I could stop, don't you think I would, old man?"

"Call me that again and I'll leave you with these things until the next game and you can have the whole stadium laughing at you."

Chuck obligingly shuts up, because if there's anything you learn about Hercules Hansen within a few days of meeting him, it's that he doesn't make threats he's not going to follow through on, and he is close to cruelly inventive about those threats.  And Chuck has known him much longer than a few days.

He's saved from awkward silence while Herc is poking around the antennae with his wand by Mako's arrival.  "You have not managed to counter the spell yet?" she asks, and Herc shoves Chuck's head down again when he tries to lift it to answer.

"I don't know what the hell spell he _used_ ," Herc growls under his breath, and does something that feels like a poke and then like there's ice pouring down Chuck's spine, making him twitch.

"Ow!"  A feeler twists into his field of view, and he's almost glad that last whatever hadn't removed it, because he's petulant, but he's also really not fucking looking forward to the idea of not being able to get rid of these things.

"None of the usual reversals are fucking working," Herc continues, ignoring his protests and keeping him down by the back of the neck.  "Only thing I can think is it's some fucked American thing, or Becket was trying to turn him into a beetle and only did it halfway proper."

"Chuck was provoking him all game," Mako says reasonably, and Chuck raises his head what little he can with his father's hand keeping him flat for examination.

" _Et t_ \--fuck, that hurts, stop it!"

"Nut up," Herc tells him, and lets him up, turning around before Chuck can throw him a dirty look.  "If they're not already out of here, go get Becket, and if they are, find out where they went and get him from there.  As much as I loved it when this one couldn't mouth off, I don't want a fucking half-beetle for a son."

Mako disappears so abruptly she could almost have apparated, even though he knows the stadium and most of the surrounding area is charmed to make sure that can't happen.

"Giving up?" Chuck asks nastily, reaching up to gingerly feel at the antennae.  They can feel his hands touching him, which is fucking weird.

"Unless you want me to sever them, yes, I'm fucking giving up.  And consider yourself lucky Miss Mori didn't hex you too."

"Fuck off.  Where's my broom?"  Suddenly, it dawns on him that he hasn't had it the whole time he's been in the tent, and panic rises sharply in his throat.  "Fuck, did I--"

"Yeah, you pretty well dropped it when you started crawling around like you had six legs.  Your uncle might have picked it up, I don't know."

Chuck's about to say something about going to look for it, but his pride catches him--if he steps out of here the whole world's going to get a good few hundred pictures of him with these stupid things attached to his head.  Still, the thought of not knowing where it is nauseates him a little.  "Can I--"

"Sit your arse back in that fucking chair and behave yourself when he gets here.  If he hexes you again I'm sending you straight to the fucking mediwizards."

Chuck hits the chair with such force that it sinks a little into the ground.


	18. R is for Road Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - road trip. feat. chuck, mako, and raleigh, and the threesome fic i'm teasing myself with.
> 
> i'm not even sure this qualifies as an alternate universe, but it was on the list and sINCE WHEN AM I GONNA PASS UP ROAD TRIPS.

Chuck Hansen is officially the worst backseat driver Raleigh's ever met.  They're four days in and every time he gets behind the wheel, Chuck starts _talking_.  And it's not like he's exactly quiet other times, but Raleigh is starting to be able to break down his psyche, and frankly, that was closer than he ever really felt like getting with the little asshole.

A pathological need for control, he thinks.  Mako has her face buried in the map, but he thinks she's about as annoyed as he is, because her nose is twitching in that way that tells him something's getting to her.

 _That's_  day four.

Day five starts with Mako waking up to the two of them squabbling over her shoulders, and everything goes downhill from there.

On day six the car breaks down, and this time it's Mako and Chuck glaring at each other over Raleigh's shoulders, because they're both sure they know what's wrong with it.

It turns out they're both right, they're just using different words for the part they think is broken.

Raleigh's pretty sure Australian is a different language than English.

On day seven Mako unstraps her seatbelt and climbs into the backseat with Chuck when he starts telling Raleigh he's driving too slow and shuts him up.  Probably Raleigh could figure out what she did if he were looking or listening, but the choir of angels in his head is singing too loudly for him to even think about looking in the rearview mirror.  Whatever it is she does, it works for the next three hours, and she serenely exits the car and gets back to the passenger seat at the next gas station, her job being terrifyingly competent done.

When Raleigh wakes up on day eight, there's nearly three hundred combined pounds of person on top of him, Mako slung across his left side with her arm around his waist and her head resting against his heartbeat, Chuck on his right with his face tucked into his neck and his leg trapping Raleigh's down.  He has no idea when or why Chuck switched beds in the middle of the night, and it's not like he minds, but it's new.  Usually the only thing Chuck will ever be caught dead doing anything resembling cuddling with is Max.  When all three of them end up in the same bed, he balances on the edge to avoid their tangled limbs.

Him waking up is kind of cute, because he hums at first and tightens the grip he's got on Raleigh's shoulder before he realizes what he's doing and throws himself backwards with enough force to accidentally propel him off the side of the bed.

It being cute in no way means Raleigh does not laugh his ass off at it.

By the time they hit day fifteen, Chuck doesn't even pretend he's using bed number two.

He is, however, still pretending he's not a little bit of a cuddler.

But they both kind of know better, at this point.


	19. S is for Superheroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - superheroes/superpowers. feat. the hansen family because the next chapter of lighthouse features them and so does something else i'm writing and basically i'm a trash bucket.

Herc stares at his brother across the top of the paper he's trying to read.  "I'm not wearing fucking spandies."

"What about yoga pants," Scott suggests helpfully.

"I think those are spandex too," Chuck points out in passing as he walks in the door, heading straight from the entrance towards his room.

"You'd know," Scott calls after him.

"Yeah, they're right distinctive when you're taking them off a girl, not that _you'd_ know."

"I think that's what the kids are calling a 'burn' these days, Scotty," Herc says idly, flipping his paper back up.  The headline on the front of it says SPY DRONES OVER SYDNEY? and the picture underneath it has the approximate quality of some shit a gossip rag would take, two blurry shapes in the sky.

It's really much funnier if you know what they actually are, Scott thinks to himself, taking a drag on his cigarette and blowing the smoke out in a ring in the direction of his older brother, just over the edge of the paper so it'll look like a halo for a moment before it dissipates.

"You fuckers are in the news again," Chuck yells down the hall at them.  "And you need better kit than those shitty ski masks, this isn't the fucking _Incredibles_."

"See?" Scott says to his brother, blowing another breath towards him, which rips the paper in half.  "Chas knows what he's on about, doesn't he?"

Herc gives him a flat look and puts down the halves of the paper.  "You couldn't've waited 'til I'd finished the fucking comics?"

Scott laughs, flicks cigarette ash at him, and rocks his chair back on two legs.  "Fuck, when'd you turn into _Dad_?"

"About the same time _you_ started picking up cars for a lark, when'd you think, you knob?"

"I'm not the one who went all 'greater good' on it," Scott points out, raising his eyebrows.  "That's all you beaking up the Marshal's arse."

"You're _both_ fucking annoying," Chuck says, wandering into the kitchen to grab a glass of juice.  He's all teenage skinniness and freckles and he's sporting a black eye neither of them ask after, because the boy can handle himself.  "I'm trying to finish up calculus, think you could shut it?"

Then he's gone again.

Scott raises his cigarette at his departure and turns back around to face Herc.  "Well, he knows how to make an exit.  Oi, we should--"

" _No_ , Scott," his brother tells him.


	20. T is for Teachers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - teachers. feat. unconsciously dreamy math teacher!raleigh and everybody's favourite catch 22 there-are-two-really-hard-teachers-but-you-have-to-take-one-of-them physics teachers! chuck and mako.
> 
> can u tell who my golden trio is.
> 
> i know i already did 'academia' where everyone but yancy was some flavour of professor but sue me, i'm trash for teacher aus and i really didn't want to do 'teenagers', because if i wanted to listen to the thought processes of a teenager i'd be in my own head more often. 'time travel' confuses me, 'theatre' would involve too much thought, and i feel like 'thorin lives' doesn't fit, somehow.
> 
> this is kind of boring, but, like, they can't all be hercules hansen in yoga pants.

"Sixty-seven percent of the class failed the exam," Mako points out reasonably.  "This means we wrote the test wrong or we did not teach well enough."

"Or they're not studying prope--"

"What was the subject?" Raleigh asks, cutting Chuck off and earning himself a glare.  "I can do tutoring if it's the calculus they're having a problem with."

"Yeah, right," Chuck says, still somewhat reproachfully, "You know who'd go for tutoring?  Your screaming fans."

"My _what_?"

Chuck snorts as if he is talking about the most obvious thing in the world instead of being somewhat elusive in his meaning.  What Mako believes he doesn't understand is that Raleigh is entirely oblivious to sixteen-year-old girls swooning over him.  "I've taken phones away from girls who were definitely texting about your baby blues, Becket."

"Oh, come on."

To prevent an argument, Mako tells the truth.  Raleigh, at least, tends to be very rational when confronted with a fact.  "No, he's right."

Raleigh blinks, looking at her, and opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, blinking again.  "They're _kids_."

"They are teenagers.  With hormones."

"Ugh," Raleigh says, fervently.  "I'm _thirty_."

"Not quite old enough to be their dad,"  Chuck tells him, straight-faced.  "So not that creepy."

"Is that your only classification of 'not creepy'?"

"We have a test to be looking at," Mako tells them before they can really start, and Raleigh, who is very good at listening to what she calls his attention to, obediently looks right back at the page she's examining.  Chuck takes a minute before he refocuses, sighing.

"On the bright side," Raleigh says as he's watching the two of them do the problems again, "Most of a class failing a test isn't the worst thing in the world.  The language department is taking down an organized cheating ring."

"I think Yancy is probably exaggerating," Mako tells him absently as she switches papers with Chuck.

"No, I actually think he's for real about this one.  They're having a departmental meeting to figure out how to catch them in the act.  You missed the 'a' of the integral sign there."

She corrects it, nodding to thank him.  "I'm used to doing them in my head."

"Mm."  Raleigh leans over to kiss her temple.  "Show your work, Mako."

"I'm still right fucking here, unglue your faces," Chuck gripes, and throws his eraser at Raleigh's head, missing as Raleigh pulls back and hitting Mako on the cheek instead.  "Fuck, sorry."

" _Language_ ," they both warn him at once, and Mako throws the eraser back.

It hits him in the forehead, and Raleigh grins at her.  "Good one."


	21. U is for Urban Fantasy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - urban fantasy. feat. haunted!raleigh, ghost!yancy, and REALLY haunted exorcist!mako.
> 
> tbqh i didn't want to do any of the u's. i also want about 5000 more words to make this not shitty. urban setting / supernatural elements is hard to cram into a short thing.
> 
> also, i realized yesterday that i actually stole a line from one of my fics verbatim from somebody else's without realizing it. so, um, i changed it and it wasn't in this fic but i still feel i owe the world an apology and since escort!yancy is something i need to get my shit together on and write an ending to this was the next thing i was publishing

Raleigh Becket has been running from his brother's ghost for five years.  From Anchorage to Seattle to Portland to San Francisco to Los Angeles.  After LA he's going to try Tijuana.

But he can't fucking get away, because it's hard to hide from someone who doesn't have to sleep and who can walk through walls.  It's not really Yancy, he tells himself, because Yancy would never, ever do this to him.  But it looks like Yancy and it smiles like him and it never talks, but it's close enough to drive him insane.  And fuck, just try to get a job when there's a ghost trailing you.  It's next to impossible, but he manages in every city, shitty construction jobs--never in sales, because shades of your dead brother don't really help your charisma--and sometimes a delivery gig.  Never anything that requires him to interact with people or be the first thing anyone sees when they walk in the door because Yancy tends to chase them away.

(That's one of the eight thousand reasons he knows it's not really Yancy.  Yancy would never, ever get in the way of his brother providing for himself.  The day before Yancy died they'd been a little bit drunk in the house in the Alaskan backwoods and his brother had said _'course it fucking sucked taking care of you.  But I was happy to do it, all right?  And now you gotta learn how to do it yourself, kiddo.  Only thing I ever wanted to do for you except make sure you were healthy and happy was to make sure you could make it on your own._

And then he'd just up and died the way twenty-five-year-olds weren't supposed to do and Raleigh had had to learn by himself.)

And that's probably the unfinished business that has Yancy hanging around.

He wonders if Yancy knows he's actually hurting his cause by hovering.  He wonders if Yancy's in there at all.

(At first he liked the ghost, almost.  It was a little like having him back.  But now it's plain that this is more of a haunting than a friendly visit and seeing his face everywhere makes it difficult to have a life, like it wasn't going to be difficult enough already.)

He's not the only one with this problem.  In fact, he's got it pretty good--Yancy's never tried to hurt him, just follows him everywhere, and he does seem to be well and truly incorporeal.  Means he never messes anything up.  Means he's not the sort of spirit that eats dead bodies or the kind that kills small animals and leaves them everywhere as a warning.  And, furthermore, he shows no interest in freaking anyone out, it's just that he does because of what he is.  He's not hiding around corners or waiting for people with glowing eyes, he's really just following his little brother around.

There are urban legends about a girl with a city full of ghosts following her, but Raleigh doesn't believe them, not until he meets her.  There are only a few left by the time he does.  Ten or so.  An unusually high amount, still, but not unheard of.

He doesn't know if he wants to exorcise his brother, because in some ways it feels like a betrayal.  But then again, whatever it is isn't Yancy, and it's tearing him apart even if it doesn't seem to be malicious.  But he visits the little store anyway, on the dingy corner of Second and Main, a clean door in a dirty wall with a sign on it that says OPEN in small, neat letters.

She doesn't speak when he walks in, jacket pulled threadbare over his shoulders, just looks at him from within the circle of spirits surrounding her.  So he speaks first.  "Those all yours?"

"Yes," she says simply.  "I got rid of the rest of them."

"Save some for the rest of us," he jokes, but he knows his face is tired.  Yancy, who came in by his shoulder, is drifting curiously around the shelves.  "Are you Miss Mori?"

"Yes.  It's him you want the help with?"

She's pointing, and she follows her finger to his brother, who smiles as his gaze falls on him.  "I don't know."

"He is relatively benign," she acknowledges, looking at Yancy with her head tipped a little to the side.  Like she's examining him.  "Do you know him, or did he simply attach?"

"My brother," Raleigh says, voice rough.  "I'm not sure if I want to get rid of him."

Because on one hand, Yancy's a fucking pain, and he's driving Raleigh up the wall, possibly literally, and he hasn't been able to stop grieving for five years and he hates having him here, but even though Raleigh knows the ghost isn't really Yancy, it still looks enough like him that the thought of _getting rid of him_ makes him feel like the world's worst brother.

Mako looks at the two of them.  "Have you tried talking to him?"

"He doesn't answer."

"We can fix that," she says after a moment, glancing over her shoulder at the tall silhouette of a man there.  He nods, and she turns back.  "What's his name?"

"Yancy," Raleigh answers, and allows himself to be hopeful.


	22. V is for Vampire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - vampires. feat. vampires!yancy and raleigh and discussion of slayer!mako who will have none of their angsty twilight shit.
> 
> i know vampires have been done to death but i've spent my whole damn life this week doing a viking mythology essay, you bet your ass i wasn't writing 'vikings', although that was my original plan.
> 
> i decided to self-indulgently write more yancy because i have yancy on the brain always. escort!yancy may actually end up being a two-parter because it's getting way too long. that is, if i live through this week.

Yancy is trying to read a book, but a hundred and eighty pounds of his younger brother burrowing into his side is making it hard.  Raleigh's pinning down one of his arms, frowning into the side of his neck, and Jesus, if the kid wanted to cuddle he didn't have to pounce for it.  If he had _asked_ , Yancy would have just opened his arms, but no, Raleigh had to just sit on him, so now, to discourage such behaviour, Yancy has to keep trying to read, turning the pages clumsily, one-handed.

"What's up, kid?" he finally asks, and Raleigh pulls back to look at him.

It's funny, because being an undead creature of the night has not turned Raleigh into any less of a ray of sunshine.  His pout is practically a lethal weapon.  He resembles a kicked puppy.  Yancy wants to hug him.  If he didn't know he was immune, he'd swear his brother was glamouring him.  "I met a girl."

"Like, a girl, or a _girl_?"

Raleigh knows the difference, but he rolls his eyes anyway, his lip pulling up with false disdain to reveal the sharp curve of tooth hiding underneath it.  "A _girl_ , Yancy."

And he doesn't say anything else.  So Yancy stares at him.  "Why is that a problem?"

"Because, um--"

"She's human, isn't she," Yancy interrupts him, sighing and knocking his head back against the pillow, because Raleigh's weakness is obvious, strong, and ever-present.  Either he likes an underdog, enjoys some bloodlust with his sex, or he's just plain read too many YA novels.

"Um," Raleigh says, and Yancy's eyes narrow.

"'Um'  _what_ , Raleigh?"

"So I might have met her in an alley," Raleigh starts, and Yancy's groaning before he even finishes.

"Jeez, kid, we've had this talk before.  If you're going to eat something, _don't fuck it_.  Or vice versa.  Bad idea.   _Bad idea_.  What does it _take_ to get that through your pretty little head?" He puts Raleigh in a headlock, dropping the book, and knuckles the top of his head with his free hand, because it might have been over a hundred years, but Raleigh's still his little brother.

Raleigh pulls away disheveled and glaring, shoving at his shoulder.  "I didn't do _either_.  I'm not _going_ to."

"What?"

"We were in the alley because she was trying to kill me," Raleigh says, in a rush, like if he gets it out fast enough, Yancy won't hear it, which is just unsound logic on his part all around.

Yancy gapes, and then scrubs his palms over his face, because he cannot _believe_ this.  "How have I kept your scrawny ass alive for a hundred and fifty-five years?"  He smacks Raleigh upside the head, ignoring his brother's protest.  "Do you know what _self-preservation_ is, you _idiot_?"  He pauses.  "Or, wait, do you mean, like, regular human kill.  Because in that case, go for it, I guess."

"No, um, she had the mark," Raleigh tells him, ducking his next smack.  "On her shoulde--"

" _I know where they put it_ ," Yancy says, exasperated.  "You _idiot_."

"Look, are you going to help me, or not?"

"Help you fuck a slayer?  Are you insane?"

"I said I'm not trying to!" Raleigh says, and this time smacks him right back.  "I just want to--to talk to her.  She did this thing when she was trying to get ahold of me that I remember from somewhere.  And she almost got me, it was--great.  It was, god, I don't know, Yancy, I need to talk to her."

Yancy barely feels the hit.  He growls, low in his throat, at nothing in particular, sitting up and shaking his head in despair.  You raise a kid for a hundred and fifty-five years and you think you've beaten a little of the absolute moron out of him, but apparently not.  "That is not _gr_ \--she wants to _kill us_ ," he sputters, as if Raleigh really needs this explained.  "What about talking to her seems like a good idea?"

"You'd like her," Raleigh insists.

"I don't like things that try to kill me," Yancy says slowly, because Raleigh is particularly dumb today, apparently, and pinches the bridge of his nose.  "And I'm not helping you kidnap a slayer, they move in packs."

Raleigh sighs like he is trying to explain something perfectly reasonable and Yancy's not getting it.  Which this is not.  This is not reasonable at all.  "I'm telling you, I just want to talk to her.  And I'm doing it with or without you.  Which do you prefer?"

Well, that's just fucking unfair.  "--fine.  But I'll scatter her body parts to so many different corners of this city they won't be able to find them all if she lays a finger on you."

Raleigh beams like Yancy has just handed him the moon and reaches out to shush him and pet his hair, which he does not appreciate.  "Shh.  There's a good Yancy."

"You can lose a _lot_ of bits before you die, dipstick."


	23. W is for Western

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - western. feat. cowboys!herc, scott, and tamsin, farmers and stay at home parents!stacker and angela, and lil babies!chuck and mako. historical accuracy and attitudes can suck my dick, i'm making stacker/herc/angela a thing if it kills me. i wrote it in like one minute chunks over the day so it's fragmented and awful
> 
> there were so many good things i could have done here. werewolves. wings. war. wizards. i could have made herc be a wedding planner because these things aren't serious in the slightest
> 
> also, someone teach me how to write porn, bc escort!yancy isn't going well. i might discard the porn, that's how poorly it's going.

Tamsin's hat, pulled low, hides her pointed face as she rides up the path, reins held in one hand as she dismounts smoothly at the gate of the fence surrounding the little house.  She passes for a man enough that no one questions her, with her hair shorn short and her clothing loose enough to hide her frame.  Angela barely looks up from the garden as she passes, but calls through the open door, "They're back!"

"Sure are," Tamsin grins at her as she heads for the fence's back gate and the stables.  "Boys thought they could beat me out, but it turns out Tango's faster."

As if anybody didn't know that.

Herc and Scott are neck and neck as they come up the path, but Scott, who is _insane_ , vaults the fence when they hit it and keeps going towards the stable, as her husband dismounts and closes the gate behind him, dropping the reins and letting the horse trot free as he comes up to catch her in his arms and leans down to kiss her.

"Oh my god," she says, and shoves him away as he comes close, because her son is dropping out of the tree in the yard as Scott passes under it, down into his arms, and she has fleeting, horrible visions of him missing and breaking his spine, or a leg, or being trampled, or the horse spooking and kicking him or bucking Scott off, but Scott just catches him and keeps going as Chuck whoops and the two of them hurdle the back fence as well.

When she looks at Herc, he's wearing an expression that's damn near identical to the one she's sure she's wearing: eyes wide, mouth slightly open, expression horrified.

"Fu-- _Scott_!" he growls as he pulls away from her, kicking his face back into gear and striding across the yard after them.

Stacker exits the house to stand behind her, wiping his wet hands on his trousers.  "Did I miss them?"

"They'll be back around," she says, sighing as she watches Herc stomp across the yard, probably to try and give his brother hell.  "They haven't said anything about how much they got.  My guess is that it didn't go so well."   Herc's horse nudges Stacker from behind, and he turns slowly to face it before she ducks under its head to take the reins and lead it towards the stables.  "As long as the children are fed, it doesn't matter."

When she opens the dirty stable door, her husband is in the middle of arguing with his brother, and her son is pouting.  So she guides the horse between the two brothers and gently slaps its shoulders to make it walk between them.  "Take care of your horse."   He looks like he's about to argue for a moment, but she's got him well wrapped around her finger.  So she kneels down to pick up her boy and carry him away, kissing her husband on the cheek before she leaves and letting Scott kiss her on the cheek.  "Both of you are taking a bath as soon as you get in."   Tamsin snorts from where she's sitting on the floor, twirling her hat around her finger.  "You, too."

Chuck is docile when she's holding him like he's not usually, lying quiet on her shoulder until she puts him down inside.  He trails her as she walks over to Stacker at the stove, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her forehead on his shoulder.  "They're fighting again."

"Better Scott than me," he says, ever-pragmatic.

"I get him tonight," she tells him, voice lowered so her son won't hear.

"I'll take care of the numbers with Tamsin and Scott, then."

Yes, they work out well enough.


	24. X is for X-Men Fusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - x-men fusion. feat. teenage mutant ~~ninja turtles~~!beckets, very, very slightly implied becketcest, little mutant!mako, little pissed off human!chuck, exasperated surrogate father of a house full of mutants!stacker, and some appearances from your faves, maybe.
> 
> things you didn't know about me: x-men is sort of my jam. that said, consider this something of an unofficial part of [this universe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3575072/chapters/8194951), which takes place before that one, because herc hansen in yoga pants. i want everyone thinking about it.
> 
> guess what's up next. if i can stop laughing long enough to write it.

Really, it's only the Beckets' lack of true destructive abilities that have kept the house standing as long as it has.  Because, by god, they are the cause of every bit of trouble within the walls of the mansion, or they are at least standing somewhere near the centre of it.

The lights all go out at once even though there's nothing wrong with the circuit breaker.

That's Yancy, but really, it's his brother's fault, because Raleigh is the one who woke him up wrong from his nap and provoked the outage.  The kicker is that neither of them can figure out how to turn the lights back _on_.  Yancy doesn't know what he did, and he doesn't really have any control over lights coming on anyway, and Raleigh has been trying unsuccessfully for several hours to zap them back on.  Everyone has gathered around in various chairs to watch him and throw advice around--except for the Wei triplets, who are in the basement with Tendo trying to get the power back on at the source--Sasha Kaidonovsky is sitting in a red armchair under the nonfunctioning lamp with her husband at her feet; eight-year-old Chuck Hansen is asleep curled up on the footstool in front of them, his father and uncle having given up the night as a bad job and retired to the guest room ages ago; Stacker is barely awake on the chair opposite the Kaidonovskys', occasionally murmuring a word of pointed advice.

It's almost eleven and his attempts have become increasingly more half-hearted as his brother has fallen asleep sprawled across his lap on the couch, one hand having abandoned the pursuit entirely in favour of petting through Yancy's hair.  Occasionally he still screws up his face and tosses what looks like a ball of light across the room towards the lamp, but it never really seems to stick.

Mako is sitting on the floor by his feet, leaning against his knees, with Yancy's limp hand halfway to slipping off the top of her head, shaping a vague blob of shadow in front of her, feet stretched out at childishly flexible angles in front of her as she focuses on the darkness between her fingers.

Every time Raleigh lights up, his brother turns his face a little further into his stomach to hide from it and Mako twitches, irritated, as her project disappears in the brilliance.  "Enough," Sasha finally tells him, when it hits midnight and his little glow stutters out before he can even try throwing it.  "Go to sleep."

Mako has drifted off resting against his leg, Yancy's arms are wrapped around his waist, his face turned into Raleigh's hip, occasionally muttering something into the skin there that makes Raleigh squirm.  Gesturing helplessly to the two of them, pinning him down, he gives her pleading eyes.  "I can't."

"You cannot do this all night, either," she points out, and shifts in her seat, eyes closing.  "Go to sleep."

"I gotta get the lights back on," Raleigh says, and his face is illuminated only by the fact that his hand is still glowing.

"Go to sleep," Stacker seconds, ignoring him, voice rolling low through his chest, command implicit in his tone.

Raleigh's chin drops immediately.  "Not fair not to let him fight back," Aleksis says quietly.

Stacker shows no remorse at all, one eyebrow lifting.  "His insomnia does not dictate my sleep habits.  I'm going to bed.  And in the morning, wake him up as rudely as possible.  He might cancel out his brother, if we're lucky."

With that he's out the door, and both the Kaidonovskys look over at the tangled mass of children on the couch.

"Drop the little Hansen on them tomorrow morning," Sasha suggests, and earns herself half a grin.

"I do not think he meant to awaken him with a rude thing."

"Then he ought to have been more specific."

Her smile is wicked.


	25. Y is for Yoga

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - yoga. feat. wedding planner!herc in yoga pants, shitty sitcom actor!scott hansen, career advice column writer and stay at home dad!stacker, and gym employees!kaidonovskys.
> 
> that's right. it's finally here. i want to say it's because i spent a lot of time writing this that it took so long but the truth is that every time i started i laughed too hard to continue. this time i pushed through the laughter, but if there are any typos, it's because i was crying too hard to see them. feel free to let me know. this is hands down one of the three most ridiculous things i've ever written, but it wasn't quite as ridiculous as i wanted it to be. that says something about the other two, i guess. recently everything i've been writing has been shit

"You need to relax before you have an aneurysm, Hercules," Stacker says reasonably, and Herc's face goes flat and unimpressed, the effect of which is ruined by the bundle of spandex hitting him in the face, courtesy of his younger brother.

"Fuck that, your whole job is making sure shipments of flowers come in on time, just put on the fucking pants."

There's a distinct possibility Scott's only in this for the torture purposes.

"These were invented by a fucking voyeur," Herc grumbles once he's got the yoga pants on, wishing for the first time in his life that he owned a shirt that _didn't_ fit, because then maybe something would be left to the imagination.

"So you tuck left, huh?" Scott asks innocently, looking far too smug for someone who hasn't had to go to work in two weeks.  Stacker gets in between them before anything has a chance to start, and they're out the door in fairly short order, all things considered.

The drive mostly consists of all three of them trying to be surreptitious about the fact that they're trying to conceal which way they tuck, now that Scott has pointed out how obvious it is.  However, as any person who has ever worn yoga pants would know, there are few subtle ways to shove your hand into them, and they are, for the most part, wildly unsuccessful.

Stacker is imbued with the natural grace and dignity to walk into the gym as if he is not wearing god's punishment for their sins and make it look as if this is something perfectly average for him that should not be challenged, because after all, when has he ever not known what he was doing?

Neither Hansen can imitate that purposeful affect, and they crowd into the door behind him looking like grown men in the clothing of teenage girls, which, if anyone had asked Herc, would be exactly how he would have described any forty-five-year-old male wearing black spandex capris.

There's a green stripe up each side.  It feels a little bit like an extra insult.

Scott's awkwardness quickly fades, probably because he's been nude on TV at least once before, and Herc doesn't have the heart to go looking for the porn career he's certain existed at one point.  He's at least slightly pleased to note that Scott acting like his normal fucking awful self while wearing yoga pants looks like exactly what it is, and exactly as stupid besides.  He thinks he remembers having to sit through endless cake-tasting sessions with one of the women in the corner, and he _knows_ he remembers the blonde standing next to her, because as he remembers, her husband left her at the altar, and he'd had to threaten her father with legal action to get paid.

So this is hell, then.  They are the only men in the room.

(Scott clearly does not find that hellish.  If Herc were still fifteen he'd be inclined to agree, but he's a long time past that now.  His brother, he thinks, stopped maturing sometime in the nineties.)

The instructor is a tall woman who looks over them with a razor sharp curve in her bright red lips, and he is fairly certain she's staring unashamedly at at least one of their asses, but he's not sure whether or not he hopes it's his.  "Aleksis," she calls.  "You are late for your class."

The real instructor is massive, literally ducking through the door out of the office, and he examines the class impassively, then silently smiles when he sees the three of them.  He is wearing sweatpants.  The size or positioning of whatever he's packing is mercifully uncertain.

"Your pants are nice," the woman says, like she's speaking for him, and disappears down the hall.

This time, he's positive she's staring at Stacker's ass as she leaves.


	26. Z is for Zombie Apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alternate universe - zombie apocalypse. feat. my fave golden trio!zombie hunters and some becket angst.
> 
> there were three options and two of them were zombies. i can't believe i'm done with this, i don't know what i'm going to do with myself. someone prompt me or something. ugh. or i should finish all those little offshoots of this. and lighthouse. lmao i'm going on vacation in a week
> 
> also, if this sounds sort of terse and choppy it's because i've been in the thomas harris and it's hard not to have a little bleed. got a bit long, too.

The wall that used to hold up the awning in front of the hospital is thirteen feet high, and there is no option for them to delay.  Raleigh, kneeling, lets Chuck, with Mako wrapped like a koala around his shoulders, use him as a step to get her up to the ledge, where she locks her feet around the bricks and helps him up after her.

They are heavy with muscle and the guns do not help; he thinks his spine will be complaining about this later.

But on the ground nothing moves fast enough to overtake them.  They are being quiet, as quiet as they can be, and when both Chuck and Mako are up on the wall Raleigh uses the side of the building to get up high enough to grab their hands and let them haul him up after them.  From this perch they survey the building's facade, and eventually, Raleigh speaks, almost inaudibly, pointing out a jagged path up the side that relies on bricks that are probably loose and will require probably too much teamwork.  It also takes them past one window, which none of them are excited about, and then--the top.

"Mako," Chuck says, "You get up first, keep it clear around where we're coming up, yeah?"

She nods.  It makes sense; she's smallest, can scramble over the ledge fastest, but the idea of catapulting her into the unknown still unsettles Raleigh.

Chuck almost falls on his way up the side of the building; once Mako's foot slips and clangs against the singular window, and both of the men, who are below it, hold their breaths and wait for the shower of glass and the dead hand to come rattling through it, grasping for them, but nothing happens.  "Too quiet," Raleigh grits out as he's hauling himself up the final leg, just before Mako throws herself over the edge of the roof into possible death.

There's a soft affirming noise from below him, and he slings himself over the ledge after Mako, putting her at his back with the gun pointed outwards, fumbling to get its nose up after it's spent its time on his back on the way up the side of the building.  The nearly silent thud behind them half a minute later tells them Chuck has made it over the edge.  "How many of the nasty bastards--" he starts, but Mako cuts him off with a count.

"Seven."

Seven but they are shambling slowly towards the three of them; easy pickings.  Raleigh knows that many of them can move much faster, but he supposes they don't seem difficult prey; he's never met a zombie that knew to be threatened by a gun.  "We'll cover you, Mako," he murmurs.  "Lock the roof door, or break the knob off.  Keep it from opening."

She slips out from between them and runs, and that's when the roof starts moving.

Raleigh squeezes out four shots, drops two, one without a spine to hold it up anymore and the other unable to walk with no knees--they're all after Mako, attracted to the movement more than to the motionless on their edge of the roof.  Chuck, ever the perfectionist, takes aim carefully, twice, and picks off the two closest, heads going up in a fine red-black mist--on their good days, Raleigh will admit he trusts Chuck's trigger finger more than his own to make the fine kills.  Mako uses the sword on her back to take down one too close for either of them to hit without spraying her with blood, and then pushes the sword through the handle of the door to keep it from being pulled open from the inside.  This leaves her defenseless, but they are covering her, and in five more shots--one from Chuck, four from Raleigh, the roof is silent, except for the three of them.

The smell of decay is cloying, but they are so used to it it hardly even registers.  Below, drawn by the sounds of gunshots, the ground is beginning to move with the things, swarming to the hospital doors.  "Better sleep here tonight and wait for them to clear out," Raleigh says as he walks over to put down the two he immobilized, but didn't kill.

They do, against the edge of the roof, with the gun in front of them in case they should have to use it, but the door is handily blocked.  Nothing comes through.

The trouble the next morning is that they have to open that door to start clearing out the top level.

"I will pull out the sword," Mako suggests, "So I have it back.  Chuck can open the door; he is strong enough to get it closed again if need be and he has two good arms.  Raleigh can cover it."

And that is what they do, only when they open the door and he pulls the trigger at the first thing that comes through, the one that rises to take its place has a face that is achingly familiar.

It is missing an eye on its right side, and its leg is clawed open, jeans in tatters as if something had been ripping at it.  But even without the eye and the other one gone white, Raleigh knows it would have been grey-blue and half-lidded.  The eyebrows--what is left of the one, in any case, the other one looks chewed-off--might easily have been slightly pointed upwards, easily turned to mischief.  The square chin is intact.  Still sticks out slightly too far.

Yancy Becket is not grinning as he used to do, instead his mouth gapes, and his hair is barely blonde anymore under the dirt and fluid that cakes it, certainly not as neat as he liked it when he was alive.

Raleigh drops his gun and it goes off as Yancy lurches forwards, Chuck cursing and slamming the door shut on his brother and the gun, both wedged into the crack between door and wall.

He stumbles back; there is nowhere to go but away until the back of his legs hit the edge of the roof and even then he wants to keep going.  His hands are shaking, his heart is pounding so loudly he's certain every zombie for miles can hear him screaming silently, he thinks he might be crying but he isn't sure, and Mako is stepping into the line of sight between him and it, pulling out a handgun from her belt.  The snap of the semi-automatic's slide sounds like cracking bone and he falls to the floor when the shot rings out, face in hands.

The door, he assumes, is closed and barricaded again before they drop to their knees on either side of him.  Chuck puts an awkward hand on his shoulder, but it's Mako he reaches for, tucking his face into the crook of her neck and gasping empty, hacking sobs out into her shoulder.

"Thank you," he says, when all but his hands have stopped trembling and the only evidence left of his grief and panic is in his eyes, blank-faced and limp-shouldered.  "For not making me do it."

No one else speaks until the sun starts to set again.


End file.
